


Midnight Moon

by modernminimalist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, M/M, Mild Gore, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, WIP, Werewolf Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:40:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29094396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modernminimalist/pseuds/modernminimalist
Summary: Returning home after fourth year doesn’t go as Draco expected. Finding himself scared and alone, he turns to an unlikely source for help.-Canon divergent AU starting between fourth and fifth year.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 19
Kudos: 50





	Midnight Moon

**Author's Note:**

> This is very much a WIP, and I’ll still be working on/finishing up other writing projects. But this has been knocking around my head for a while so...enjoy!

**Malfoy Manor, July**

_Potter._

Draco Malfoy almost wants to laugh when the boy who lived pops quite uninvited into his head. 

In a weird way, he’s grateful. It gives him something else to focus on instead of the sweat-slicked skin of his body, the too-bright lights of the chandeliers high above, the wetness in his jogging bottoms where he’s obviously pissed himself. 

It’s not ideal, of course. Thinking about Potter while he’s lying in his own urine, scared out of his fucking mind, but there he is anyway. Unbidden and distinct.

 _Just fucking lovely,_ Draco thinks.

Draco’s arms have been stretched out, perpendicular to his body, bony wrists pinned to the polished rosewood ballroom floor. The movement had tugged at something, dull and achingly familiar in his right shoulder and he’d just thought: Potter. 

When that fucking hippogriff had... _mauled_ him, Draco genuinely thought - for a second - he was really, truly going to die. The thing had stood over him, yellow eyes narrowed and calculating. Draco clamped his own eyes firmly shut, thinking _this is it, today is the day, death by chicken_. 

When nothing happened, he opened them and was met with two things: Hagrid waving his arms and _shoo-ing_ that great, bloody bird away. And Potter. Raven hair wild and windswept from his impromptu flight, cheeks pinked up from the cold, and looking - 

Worried.

No. That couldn’t be right. Except for the fact that it was. 

“ _Youstupidstupidwanker_.” 

It had come out in one panicky-sounding breath as Potter shifted next to him in the crunchy autumn leaves, his green eyes flicking briefly to Draco’s injured shoulder and back again. 

Draco felt the ground start to tilt sideways then which he thought was a bit odd so he’d dug his fingers into the dirt to hang on, though the rational part of his brain reminded him he was just _dizzy_ from the injury, the shock, the blood loss. Because surely that was the only explanation for The Event That Followed, which was this: Draco grabbed for Potter’s hand, and Potter had just...let him. More than that, he felt Potter’s thumb briefly skate over his knuckles, just once back and forth, but somehow it was enough to cause Draco’s body to relax, just a fraction. 

And then it was gone. 

Afterwards, in the hospital wing, half-listening to his father berate Dumbledore and Severus and Madam Pomfrey and anyone else who had the _absolute temerity to suggest that Lucius Malfoy’s son and heir_ was, perhaps, putting it on a little bit, Draco made the quiet decision to forget that he’d held Potter’s hand. It had never happened. He had imagined it. 

“Where’s-”

A gnarled, dirty hand clamps over his mouth, cutting him off as he continues to struggle. The hand shifts, briefly pinches his nose, cutting off his air supply. _Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic._ He stills, but the hand doesn’t come away. The edges of his vision turn hazy as unfamiliar voices talk around him, but Draco tries to focus. He needs to. 

_One on each side. Another further away. Three. There are three of them._

“-sake, don’t want him to pass out.”

“He was fighting me.”

“He’s barely fifteen, you saying you can’t handle a scrawny teenager?”

“He’s not that scrawny...d’ya think Greyback will let me play with him when he’s finished?”

“Maybe. If he survives.”

A dark chuckle, then someone clearing their throat.

“Stop fucking about. Open his mouth, he needs to drink it all.”

The gnarled hand lifts, and Draco barely takes a breath before someone is pouring a potion down his throat. He chokes on it, spits a mouthful out. 

“Fuck! _Hold him still_.”

“He spat half of it-“

“ _I_ _know_. That’s why I have more, just in case. One way or another, he’ll get the right amount.”

“Could end up being too much.” 

“Hm.”

“Just hurry up. Fenrir’s on his way.”

Then hands are pulling his mouth open and more liquid is poured down his throat. Another hand over his mouth again but at least he can breathe through his nose this time. 

_Breathe._

_Breathe, breathe, breathe_. He thinks again of Potter. 

And Moody. 

Draco had often let himself daydream of what his animagus form would be. During first year, watching Professor McGonagall turn herself into a cat and back again, he decided quite vehemently that he was going to be a dragon. Like his namesake. He was going to be huge and powerful and everyone would be scared of him. Especially Cassius Warrington. He’d breathe fire at Cassius Warrington. He’d make Cassius Warrington cry, just like he’d made Theo cry. (Though when he’d told Theo this, Theo had glared at him, and said that he hadn’t cried at all. Draco was being stupid. “Besides,” he’d sniffed, “it’s not like you actually get to _choose_ your animagus form.”)

He didn’t think about it again beyond the odd daydream until he heard the rumour that Potter had cast a corporeal patronus in third year. Outwardly he’d scoffed in disbelief to anyone who would listen, rolling his eyes at the mere prospect of it. Privately, he’d looked up the stag patronus in the library, idly running his thumb over his knuckles as he stared down at the words _protective instincts_. 

He didn’t let himself dwell too long on that. 

When Professor Moody (who wasn’t Professor Moody at all, he found out much, much later) turned Draco into a ferret for trying to hex Potter, a mortifying thought flashed through his mind: what if his animagus was a _fucking ferret_? Embarrassing. But then Moody had started to slam his little ferrety body into the stone slabs of the courtyard while everyone around them watched and laughed and did nothing while Draco tried to remember how to _breathe, breathe, breathe._

McGonagall had turned him back and he’d taken deep, desperate lungfuls of air until the panic subsided. Being transformed on the fly had felt like being suffocated and squeezed and broken and reshaped which, he supposed, he had been. Not-Moody had been unashamedly smug, McGonagall appropriately horrified.

He didn’t want to look at Potter, suddenly afraid of what he might see there, but he’d made himself do it anyway. Draco was surprised that Potter wasn’t laughing at all; in fact, his normally idiotic face was doing something rather complicated, flitting in equal measure between discomfort and anger. At what exactly, Draco didn’t know or care to know, and he raced back to the Slytherin common room as he felt his eyes prickle with heat and humiliation.

He didn’t tell anyone about the pain that time, didn’t make a fuss. 

It wasn’t a big deal anyway. Just a dull, twist-twinge ache he felt in his shoulder when he overexerted himself playing Quidditch or didn’t stretch properly or fuck, _slept on it_ weird. He was sure Madam Pomfrey could have sorted it out - she’d healed him quickly and efficiently after the hippogriff incident. It was quite impressive actually. He’d asked her loads of questions, after his father had gone. He told her he liked seeing how things worked, putting them back together again. Isn’t that what healers basically did? She’d laughed and said ‘more or less’. Told him to stop by for a chat any time he wanted, if he had more questions. If he wanted to learn. 

If he’d ever gone back, he might have been able to fix his shoulder himself, might have been able to sort out whatever Not-Moody’s punishment had fucked up. 

Ah well. 

Still, Draco realised that pain had the dual merit of distraction _and_ memory; a reminder of _before_ which also apparently meant Potter. 

What was Potter doing now? What would Potter say if he _saw_ Draco now?

_This is everything you deserve, you arrogant prick._

Maybe he’d be right. Even Draco knew he’d crossed a line on the train. 

But he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about seeing Cedric Diggory’s body. He’d never seen a dead body before. And this was Cedric Diggory. Hogwarts Champion. Impossibly handsome and charming and kind. He’d even smiled at Draco once, though it was quite possible he’d imagined it. And now he was dead, supposedly by the Dark Lord’s hand, if Potter was to be believed.

The thing was, even in that moment, Draco had believed him. Who _wouldn’t_? He’d never seen anyone look so terrified and small and lost. Someone had had to prise Potter’s hands from Cedric’s tournament jersey, he couldn’t remember who, but he could remember seeing that one of Potter’s arms was covered in blood. _That’s too much blood, it’s too much_ , Draco had thought, and had frantically looked for Madam Pomfrey in the crowd before the Slytherin prefects were ushering them back to their dorms. 

That night, his mind had whirled between Cedric, Potter’s arm and whispers in the dark of _‘he’s back, he’s back, he’s back’._ He hadn’t slept at all. 

Draco could scarcely remember the last few days of term. He heard about Professor Moody. Potter was released from the hospital. And then they were all heading home. Without Cedric. 

He knew why he’d said what he said. He was scared, but didn’t want to be. He wasn’t _supposed_ to be. He was supposed to be _pleased._ Not about Cedric, because that was ‘just unfortunate’ - he’d heard one of the sixth years say it, and then suddenly others were saying it too. It was an _unfortunate incident_. Like it was an _accident_. 

Like Cedric hadn’t been outright murdered by a lunatic who wasn’t ever supposed to actually come back. 

So Draco had played his part, the way he suspected others were too. He pretended not to be scared. He pretended he was pleased. He was monumentally cruel on the train and hexed for his efforts. And he pretended like none of it mattered because Voldemort couldn’t be back, he couldn’t be. Potter had to have got it wrong. Something else had to have happened. He was going to go home and feel safe and his parents would explain and it would all be fine. 

But it wasn’t. 

He’d been out flying when everything became horrifically clear. The sun was starting to set as he landed near the edge of the woodland, his father beckoning him over from the veranda. So he’d left the broom propped up against a tree and walked forward, not being able to think of a good enough reason not to. His father didn’t quite meet his eye, but urged Draco to follow him inside, saying things like _‘will make it right’_ and _‘be of service’_ and _‘you’re strong, Draco’_ and _‘everything will be fine’_.

The Dark Lord had returned, his father was seeking some sort of absolution and the price, it seemed, was Draco. 

_You stupid, stupid wanker._

It’s Potter’s voice, speaking Draco’s thoughts, sounding far away but so familiar in his head as a cloying stench fills his nostrils.

_You’re going to be tortured in your own home._

_You’re going to die._

_Slowly._

_Painfully._

_And no one is coming to save you._

_Not even me._

“Let him up.” A fourth voice, delivering the final order in a way that comes out more like a growl than a clear, cohesive sentence, and Draco immediately wants to vomit. “I like it when they _run_.”

It’s the last time he thinks of Potter, as he sprints through the spiky, splintering overgrowth of woodland that encloses the grounds of Malfoy Manor. He’s already bleeding - superficially, but still. The blood is vibrant against his pale skin like a beacon. 

It basically screams _come and get me!_

Draco stops, breathing hard, hands on his knees. 

First year. Detention in the Forbidden Forest. He’d thought scaring Longbottom would be enough to call it off and do something else - literally _anything else_ \- but no. That useless lumbering oaf Hagrid had stuck him with Potter instead and sent them on their merry way with his equally useless dog. 

He’d been terrified of werewolves then, too. 

At least he’d had his wand. 

The bite, when it happens, is the worst pain he’s ever experienced in his short, useless little life.

Greyback comes out of the darkness, snatches him up and flings him against a tree like he weighs absolutely nothing. Draco lands with an indelicate thud onto the damp, mulchy ground in a crumpled heap before he’s being hauled up again. 

It feels like his left arm is being broken and set on fire and flayed all at once as teeth sink into pristine pale flesh and Draco releases a high, guttural scream that only dies out when he starts to lose consciousness.

When he finally wakes up, he’s alone, but still in the woods. He wonders how much time has passed. Hours maybe, could be minutes though. He’s lying on his back and when he opens his eyes it’s to see a dark, cloudless sky full of twinkling stars. For a moment he forgets himself and thinks of the enchanted ceiling in the great hall, the start of term feast. Blaise trying to steal potatoes off his plate for literally no good reason other than to piss Draco off. 

Then his stomach lurches and the world tilts sideways and he rolls onto his front, holding himself up on his hands and knees, dry heaving and choking in equal measure before vomiting blood. 

“S’not good,” he murmurs, struggling into a sitting position, hot spikes of pain lancing through his body. 

He doesn’t want to look at his arm. 

He closes his eyes tight, takes a deep breath that makes him feel like he’s going to be sick again. 

_The worst part is over._

_Look at your arm, look at it, look at what’s to become of you._

Draco opens his eyes, steals himself and looks. The bite marks are fresh and bloody, and there’s mud caked into the broken skin. It’s already starting to feel hot and itchy, like it’s infected.

_Maybe this is what it’s supposed to feel like._

_Although it could be the potion._

_Fuck, what did they give me?_

_Severus might know._

... _maybe Severus made it._

He shakes his head, he can’t think about that right now. He needs to stand up and move. He needs healing ointments and a shower because he’s covered in blood and dirt and fuck knows what else and he _stinks_. 

He needs -

Help. He needs help.

He needs to make a plan.

And he needs to _leave._

**Author's Note:**

> Stay safe and have a lovely day 🖤


End file.
